the problem is you feel like Yao is ok/great/right every time, and his mistakes are caused by poor teammates' play
I grew up watching big guys stamp the game with presence on both ends. I mean they enforced the rules of the paint early. No layups or and 1's. Rebounding and intimidation was as much as being a pivot as anything. The stamp shouldn't be tied in to scoring. I'm just as happy with a 12pt 18 reb 5 blk game as a 30 pt game. That's why the rox have won 67% of the games when he's out and struggle when tracy is out. Tracy impacts the game more than yao. The wecko368 guy is trippin about tracy not passing yao the ball. Hell, tracy is the best post passer on the team.
Well I agree that Yao can't pass. Very cumbersome when swarmed. But he does impact the game. 28 teams double team Yao. Countless times we hear opposing coaches talk about how hard Yao is to gameplan for. We hear his opposing defenders say that Yao is the toughest assignment in the NBA post. There is no doubt it puts his mark on the game. You can't deny that. He single handedly makes Luther Head decent when they are paired. Yao has trouble making the opposition pay for gameplanning him, fair enough. He has trouble taking it to the next level at times, fair enough. But the way he is played, his teammates should have it much easier. Also about that 67% stat. Lets say Hill=Mutombo. Is that a fair comparison? If we had Hill to backup McGrady we would be pretty damn good IMO. Mutombo backs up Yao, we remain solid when Yao goes down. If we had Hill, we would remain solid.
If grant hill was tracy's replacement for 27 games, the team wouldn't go 19-8. They might got .500, but not anything close to .700 ball. I didn't mean he doesn't have any impact, but whether its a lack of stamina or inability to want to just crush the opponnet on a nightly basis, there are too many times whether its gsw or phonix when he doesn't play well. Maybe I was spoiled by watching moses,dream and a young shaq where they were going to give u the business for 37 mins a night. When u stepped on the court, u knew it was going to be a long night. I'm not going to get this thread going in the wrong direction, but I still think the rox need to make some critical move.
I use to be one of the raefer bashers on the board, but i think at this point he has improved to become a "solid" nba starter. He's not cp3 or Nash, but when he plays we win. He runs the offense, gets us into our sets, he is a decent passer, great ball handler, plays great defense. His shot could use work but it has improved. I would even go as far as to say WITH A STRAIGHT FACE he is one of the top 10-12 pg's in the league in the half court offense. We could get a so called "upgrade" run-and-gun, athletic pg, but with Yao as the first option we are a half court team. look what happened to Dream when Steve and Cuttino came. They ran Dream right out of the game and he was ineffective. Take Montay Ellis for example. Many of you would consider him an upgrade. For him to be effective, he needs to be in the open floor. We start running like Golden State and the Suns, you negate Yao. So that "upgrade" winds up hurting the team. Unless that "upgrade" is going to block some shots and grab some boards. Oh yeah and drop 25 PLUS make up for some of Yao's scoring. He isnt cp3 because we dont need him to be. He doesn't score 20ppg because we dont need him to. We need him to run our half court offense and get the ball to yao and TMac.
I once said that its his teammates' responsibility to warn Yao when weak side defensive help is coming from his blind spot (usually results in a turnover). And you construe this as me saying his mistakes are his teammates' fault. The problem is you don't fully read posts before responding to them. Ignorance is bliss, right?
I agree with you，i think if we had healthy players especially tracy，we will at least go to the west final.I advised morey to change our trainer instead of change players.
Yes Tracy is the best passer on the team and also the best playmaker but often forgets his secondary role because he is a natural Scorer. Rafer is not a Playmaker Point Guard. Yao Ming is a great passer! The Problem with Yao Ming is that the coach has not demanded him to take the reigns of the team and become its dominent force. He needs to be told!! Yao is Mr. Nice guy always doing what the coach asks of him, always avoiding any upset with team mates, he tries to blend in instead of trying to be the franchise player. When we get the third scorer, the Coach should say to Yao score at least 30 points a game, become selfish, no more sissy play! You are now the Fanchise Player.
Shouldn't the rockets starting taking the same approach as the spurs and just coast thru the season knowing you'll make the playoffs while doing your best to make sure everyone's healthy? Limit Yao and Tmacs minutes and rest them anytime any little thing comes up so that they're ready for the playoffs.
Obviously, either ur kidding or have never played basketball. Warn of weakside help? Who was going to warn him when memo was putting his shot back in his face in the playoffs? There is something called "feel" or bbiq that u need as a player. Just like in football its called pocket presence for qb's. When the pressure is coming u have to feel where to step up in the pocket. Don't know why, but yao can't feel the double. Dream was great at that. Yetti- Whether its stamina, culture or some other unknown factors, but a coach shouldn't have to tell u to dominate. That's just a natural, alpa dog instinct and yao doesn't have it. He should drop 30 a game, but he can't. Shaq avg 28 as a 20yr old rookie and if not for a 70 pt game by robinson, he would have been scoring champ. Coach didn't have to tell dream robinson has his mvp trophy either. Yao is a good all star quality big that isn't nor will he ever be mentioned with the all time greats. Nothing to be ashamed of, that's just what it is. The rox just need more consistent complimentary players on this squad. Defensively they're top 5, but because they have so many natural non scorering players, they hit these droughts and let teams stick around. I've said it before, the rox have 2 starter that have ever avg 15ppg for a season in their career. Top that off, jax is the only bench player to do it in the last 4 yrs unless u count Francis who hasn't been healthy in 4 yrs. So in the playoffs, teams know this and force the non scorers to score. If you've never avg 15ppg for a season ever, how can we expect shane,rafer, and others to do it for a playoff series? That is why this team needs a big upgrade.
i hope as anybody yao becomes the greatest player of all time and helps this team win a championship. but when he wrote tracy waves yao off a lot of the time and ignores him (along with other teammates from his implications), i was like this guy is jocking a player WAYYYYYYYYY too much.
exactly. we've gone by the same philosophy still set under JVG - too much emphasis on defense. it hasn't worked. we need to start putting 1-2 players who can put the ball on the floor and consistently create for themselves so tracy doesn't have to be the playmaker all the time and exert more energy than necessary; yao can face less double teams so he CAN dominate more often. our defensive philosophy is good enough to withstand a loss to a battier or whoever.
this with/without-yao is pretty deceptive and overused as proofs in argument. to me, for the most part, it's simply because we had better backups to replace yao when he went down than we have backups to replace mcgrady. at this stage of their respective career, to say mcgrady has a bigger impact on the game than yao does is false. it really is the other way around.
our guards did step up when tmac was out. head usually plays very well in the absence of tmac. so backups do fill in admirably for tracy. the reason we can play without yao is that our defense goes up to another level b/c of mutombo. you got to remember, for a 15 game stretch after yao, our defensive efficiency was off the charts. mutombo has ZERO impact offensively (or close to it). tmac's playmaking makes the most impact on this team, along with our defense.
I dont know why more people cant see this. Suggest a Battier trade and people go nuts. "We cant loose his defense...its too valuable!" Bull*****. As long as Yao and to a lesser exent Deke are around the Rockets will be a good defensive team beacause they shut down the paint. The Yao/McGrady Rockets have been nothing less than top 5 defensively and nothing more than mediocre offensively. Offensive IS the problem....has always been the problem. We're the Baltimore Ravens of the NBA.
So this is why they brought in Ray Lewis With a Basketball, so he can call out alignments to his teammates getting them set. And read the formations of the opposition, anticipating what they are going to run so they don't get caught off-guard.
got stats to back up your claim? i'm not only talking about this past season, but all the games yao and mcgrady have missed in all these years. this one is a reasonable assessment.
i can give you an 3 examples against "good teams" that our guards stepped up that we lost all 3 times. v. warriors in one of the previous years, head and alston stepped up with 20+ pts and we lost to a davis buzzer beater. v. nuggets, we lost again in OT despite head and alston putting up 20+ points. v. celtics, we lost after a big comeback with yao ON THE BENCH and alston and battier putting in work. but our defense isn't as good when tmac is out. you can say whatever you want about tmac's lack of intensity on that end of the floor, his size alone makes it hard for others to attack us. our defense isn't as good when tmac is out. we give up a lot of 100 pt performance from what i recall (don't know specifics, hopefully someone like durvasa can pull it up) but in general, our guards do take their game to another level when tmac is out.
given the number of games yao and mcgrady have missed, three games say little about how our players stepped up or not. and your posts after mine didn't address my original point; eg, yao's impact to the game, at this point, is greater than mcgrady's.
